538 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



rapidly expands by constantly feeling his body over and over, as 

 if in exploration of unknown territory. Later lie acquires the 

 faculties of hearing and seeing, and likewise of tasting and smell- 

 ing. Now, these senses, five in number, are they which train the 

 intellect. They are all very imperfect. Sight : but the greater 

 part of the solar spectrum is invisible — that is to say, more rays 

 which come to us from the sun are invisible than those which our 

 eye can see. Hearing : but there are sounds so low and sounds 

 so high that they are inaudible. Taste and smell : very imperfect. 

 Touch : but there are millions of particles of dust to the square 

 inch of the hand which we can not feel. Yet, even with these 

 imperfect means of education, many men have reached the con- 

 clusion satisfactory to themselves that they are clever ; but the 

 wisest man knows nothing in comparison with perfect wisdom. 



The whole of the known universe consists of matter in mo- 

 tion. All sensation, everything we know of the outside world, 

 comes to us through motion. The motion sets up a movement 

 in the nerve ending, on the skin, on the retina of the eye, or 

 wherever the proper ending capable of receiving the particular 

 motion may be situated. This motion is carried from the nerve 

 ending along the nerve to the special central organ of the brain 

 where it is interpreted. Light, sound, touch, taste, and smell are 

 the only forms of motion we are capable of appreciating, because 

 for each of these forms of motion we have a special apparatus 

 which can receive, transmit, and interpret. There are other forms 

 of motion which we can not appreciate — magnetism, for example 

 — and this simply because we have no nervous mechanism which 

 responds to that kind of motion. In like manner there can exist 

 around us forces in infinite variety of which we have absolutely 

 no knowledge whatsoever. 



Now, is it not conceivable that, in the spirit after its severance 

 from the flesh, our present imperfect senses may become perfect, 

 and the influence of other now unthought-of sensations become 

 possible ? What the new sensations and the new life will be 

 are unknown, unknowable. A man is born blind. He attains 

 through touch, hearing, and the minor senses a certain amount of 

 knowledge of the outside world, but his ideas of what really is 

 must of necessity be absolutely and entirely different from our 

 own. The operation for cataract is performed ; the man can see, 

 and is shown a familiar object — a book for example ; but he can not 

 say what it is ; he must touch it first. His ideas of things undergo 

 an immediate and radical change. So it will be at death with our 

 ideas of heaven. The blind spirit, released from the influence of 

 the flesh, passes into perfect understanding of infinite knowledge. 



To my mind, the material view of life should have no terrors 

 to believers in religion. 



